Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The long and stormy relationship between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs has been chronicled in Jobs’s biography, but, until now, Gates has said little about their divisions — and their bonds. Now the Telegraph reports that some months before Jobs died, Gates paid him a long visit. “We spent literally hours reminiscing and talking about the future.” Later, with his old adversary’s death imminent, Gates wrote to Jobs. “I told Steve about how he should feel great about what he had done and the company he had built. I wrote about his kids, whom I had got to know.” That last gesture was not, Gates says, conciliatory. “There was no peace to make. We were not at war. We made great products, and competition was always a positive thing. There was no [cause for] forgiveness.” After Jobs’s death, Gates received a phone call from his wife, Laurene. “She said; 'Look, this biography really doesn’t paint a picture of the mutual respect you had.’ And she said he’d appreciated my letter and kept it by his bed.”"

I always felt that the supposed animosity between these two individuals was mostly a media created event. Neither one of them would have been as successful as they were without the influence of the other.